Decision Making & Problem Solving

Designs for Living and Learning: Transforming Early Childhood Environments

Give children wondrous places to learn and grow! Drawing inspiration from a variety of approaches-from Waldorf to Montessori to Reggio to Greenman, Prescott, and Olds-the authors outline hundreds of ways to create healthy and inviting physical, social, and emotional environments for children in child care. Full-color photographs of actual early childhood programs demonstrate that the spaces children learn and grow in can be comfortable for children, teachers, and parents alike.

Margie Carter serves on the adjunct faculty at Pacific Oaks College Northwest, Seattle, Washington. Deb Curtis works as a child care teacher at the Burlington Little School in Seattle. Their other books include The Art of Awareness, The Visionary Director, Training Teachers, Spreading the News, and Reflecting Children's Lives.

Getting Started: Reculturing Schools to Become Professional Learning Communities

The focus of Getting Started: Reculturing Schools to Become Professional Learning Communities is answering the most common question posed by schools seeking to start their transformation into professional learning communities: Where do we begin? In the Introduction, the authors present the PLC concept, making the book accessible to those who have not yet read Professional Learning Communities at Work and providing a review of the framework for those who have. The main focus of the Introduction is that PLC is not a cookie-cutter approach, but rather a process that can be complex and non-linear. The book provides the reader access to a solid conceptual framework and concrete illustrations of how schools operate when they are functioning as PLCs, as well as to assessments for determining the effectiveness of their efforts.

1-2-3 Magic for Teachers: Effective Classroom Discipline Pre-K through Grade 8

Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education

Created by bestselling author and MIT senior lecturer Peter Senge and a team of educators and organizational change leaders, this new addition to the Fifth Discipline Resource Book series offers practical advice for educators, administrators, and parents on how to strengthen and rebuild our schools.

Few would argue that schools today are in trouble. The problems are sparking a national debate as educators, school boards, administrators, and parents search for ways to strengthen our school system at all levels, more effectively respond to the rapidly changing world around us, and better educate our children.

Bestselling author Peter Senge and his Fifth Discipline team have written Schools That Learn because educators—who have made up a sizable percentage of the audience for the popular Fifth Discipline books—have asked for a book that focuses specifically on schools and education, to help reclaim schools even in economically depressed or turbulent districts. One of the great strengths of Schools That Learn is its description of practices that are meeting success across the country and around the world, as schools attempt to learn, grow, and reinvent themselves using the principles of organizational learning. Featuring articles, case studies, and anecdotes from prominent educators such as Howard Gardner, Jay Forrester, and 1999 U.S. Superintendent of the Year Gerry House, as well as from impassioned teachers, administrators, parents, and students, the book offers a wealth of practical tools, anecdotes, and advice that people can use to help schools (and the classrooms in them and communities around them) learn to learn.

You'll read about schools, for instance, where principals introduce themselves to parents new to the school as "entering a nine-year conversation" about their children's education; where teachers use computer modeling to galvanize student insight into everything from Romeo and Juliet to the extinction of the mammoths; and where teachers' training is not just bureaucratic ritual but an opportunity to recharge and rethink the classroom.

In a fast-changing world where school violence is a growing concern, where standardized tests are applied as simplistic "quick fixes," where rapid advances in science and technology threaten to outpace schools' effectiveness, where the average tenure of a school district superintendent is less than three years, and where students, parents, and teachers feel weighed down by increasing pressures, Schools That Learn offers much-needed material for the dialogue about the educating of children in the twenty-first century.

A Problem Solving Approach to Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers (9th Edition)

Setting the Standard for Tomorrow's Teachers: This best-selling text continues as a comprehensive, skills-based resource for future teachers. In this edition, students will benefit from additional emphasis on active and collaborative learning. Revised and updated content will better prepare your students for the day when they will be teachers with students of their own.

Team Challenges: 170+ Group Activities to Build Cooperation, Communication, and Creativity

Team Challenges promotes effective communication skills and teamwork. Designed to offer teachers, facilitators, and parents a wide variety of activities to cultivate children's problem-solving skills while fostering cooperation between group members, the activities in the book utilize common household items and recycled materials, and require no more than 10 minutes, start to finish. Presented with a challenge from this book, kids work cooperatively to solve open ended problems which can incorporate structure building, improvisation skills and physical tasks. The challenges will teach children to experiment with building methods, discover new uses for everyday items, try on new personas, and express themselves as they work together toward a successful solution. Team members are required to think outside the box, communicate clearly, and cooperate with each other in order to complete each task.

Activities include building structures from materials such as index cards, drinking straws, paper clips and sticky dots; moving items from one location to another without directly touching them; or presenting a skit portraying their solution to a hypothetical dilemma. Children will learn not only from each other, but also from observing how other teams navigate each task.

Pass some creative problem solving skills on to the kids (and adults!) in your life with the fun activities you'll find in Team Challenges. Adults who work with children will find this to be a great addition to their repertoire.

Ever found yourself with five extra minutes to spare, but nothing to discuss in that short amount of time? Turn to Chapter Five, and you'll find questions such as these:

*Name things that you carry on your back (a backpack, a baby, a monkey)
*Name things that you take out (garbage, Chinese food, an opponent)
*List things that are printed (newspapers, the alphabet, T-shirts)

Need a simple activity to occupy the kids and encourage them to work cooperatively? Challenge them to one of the Tiny Tasks, found in Chapter Four:

*Build a structure as tall as possible using 5 marshmallows and 10 drinking straws
*Create a bridge that will span 18" using 3 sticky notes and 10 cotton balls
*Create a continuous line as long as possible using 1 envelope and 5 recycled bottle caps

More detailed challenges are found in subsequent chapters.

The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation (Jossey-Bass Education Series)

In this insightful look at school reform, Robert Evans examines the real-life hurdles to implementing innovation and explains how the best-intended efforts can be stalled by educators who too often feel burdened and conflicted by the change process. He provides a new model of leadership along with practical management strategies for building a framework of cooperation between leaders of change and the people they depend upon to implement it.

Comprehensive Classroom Management: Creating Communities of Support and Solving Problems (8th Edition)

Comprehensive Classroom Management presents practical methods for creating a positive learning environment, working with behavior problems, and other challenges in the classroom. This text uses real-life examples to help pre-service and in-service teachers understand and apply the principles of classroom management in their own classroom situations. Through numerous case studies, examples, and descriptions of specific strategies based on solid research and classroom experience, Comprehensive Classroom Management features classrooms ranging from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The book's approach is to focus on creating positive learning environments, and it provides extensive, practical materials on both problem-solving and building individual behavior change plans for students with behavioral problems. For pre-service and in-service teachers of elementary or secondary education, curriculum & instruction, educational psychology, or special education.

Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching And Learning

In the wake of the accountability movement, school administrators are inundated with data about their students. How can they use this information to support student achievement? This book presents a clear and carefully tested blueprint for school leaders. It shows how examining test scores and other classroom data can become a catalyst for important schoolwide conversations that will enhance schools' ability to capture teachers' knowledge, foster collaboration, identify obstacles to change, and enhance school culture and climate.

Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical And Creative Thinking In Middle And High School